Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Affinity for Linux


Recommended Posts

Please make a Linux version of your products! Since Adobe will never do that, because out of stupidity or ignorance, who knows, there's loads of potential. That Linux users aren't willing to pay for products is a myth. It's just not true! I'm willing to pay for proprietary software on Linux, if I have a value of it. Especially in design software, there's a huge gap in the Linux eco system. Yeah, we got Gimp, but Gimp is very difficult to learn and inefficient. Krita is okay, but not really suitable for real image manipulation processes. And concering the "distro problem", which one to support. I highly recommend to use Flatpak or Snap. In doing so, you're going to support every single Linux distribution without struggling with differences in libraries and so on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I registered the forums just to give my support for linux.

I own designer, Photo and Publisher.

I also bought 12 content packs from the affinity store. I dropped windows and now dont or cannot use affinity any longer.

Perhaps create a poll and reach out via newsletter to existing customers to see who would want a linux version.

 

I have tried crossover, and playonlinux but neither of them could run affinity. They can however run photoshop fine. I am still in favor of the newsletter polling idea to see how many existing clients would like to switch to linux. As another stated i would gladly purchase the linux version seeing as OS is not transferable.

Edited by Crocopede
Additional info
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Affinity software is great and while developers don't plan to make Linux version soon, maybe they could consider some engine changes, to open it for Wine in Linux. Yesterday I was looking for some alternatives for Sketchup. It is one of my favorite Windows programs without Linux native version. I've decided to try Sketchup Make 2017 with Wine because I didn't found any descent alternative. It runs great, and I must admit, I had great relief, to have one of my favorite programs runnig on Linux.

I will be waiting for the same relief at Affinity programs. Best option would be Linux native version which would use all Linux advantages, but ability to run it with Wine would also be great option. For now, Windows partition stays on my disk, just because Affinity software. [...and my daughter's Roblox, which also doesn't have alternative]

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/16/2014 at 11:29 PM, TonyB said:

We would only make a Linux version if we were confident we would recoup the $500,000 it would cost us to build it.

What about   kickstarter  ?
Im ready to support the porting into Linux. 
And then i can happily  say Bay Bay for ever to Windows and Apple.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, marcoqf said:

What about   kickstarter  ?

Serif staff have already made it perfectly clear that crowdfunding doesn’t fit their business model.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/9/2020 at 2:47 PM, Alfred said:

Serif staff have already made it perfectly clear that crowdfunding doesn’t fit their business model.

@Alfred, Thank you very much for making that point crystal clear. They've also made it very clear that they're not interested in making a version for Linux and the only thing that is likely change their mind is a very significant increase in Linux market share (currently at 3.6%).

In the meantime, there's software such as Gravit, VivaDesigner, Pixeluvo (a Photoshop Elements equivalent), Fotoxx plus there's Windows software that works well with Wine including, but not limited to, Photoline (a full Photoshop equivalent), Photoscape and versions of Photoshop and Paintshop Pro. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DMalenfant said:

Gamers have made the move though because of Steam and their platform allowing games to be played on Linux, so strictly gamers don't feel the pain from making the move.

In July 2020, only 0.86% (and declining) of Steam gamers were on Linux. 

 

Linux.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

49 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

In July 2020, only 0.86% (and declining) of Steam gamers were on Linux. 

Yes, the stats from a predominantly Windows gaming platform will indicate that their users are on Windows, predominantly.  That shouldn't be very surprising to anybody.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

In July 2020, only 0.86% (and declining) of Steam gamers were on Linux. 

 

Linux.png

To be fear, those numbers come from an opt-in poll they do to a random selection of their user base and people can just opt out of it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally I doubt that Linux has more than 5% of desktop market share. And this is split among a large number of „flavors“, of which probably Ubuntu and its derivatives have the largest share. Take away Linux machines that are not fitted for graphical work, and the business model probably just evaporated.

IMHO dev resources are way better used to reduce the number of bugs in the existing portfolio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Blende21 said:

Personally I doubt that Linux has more than 5% of desktop market share.

Overall desktop market share is not a very useful indicator of potential customers for an application that might be used only by a relatively small subset of those users.

At the very least, you can narrow it down to % of market within a designated user base.

eg..  What is the % of workstations running Linux in the VFX industry?  I'd expect that number would be considerably higher than 5%.  We're almost entirely Linux where I work.  If it were available, I'd buy licenses to run the Linux version of Affinity photo on every workstation in the studio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I own all three Affinity products. I bought them to support a company producing quality products at a reasonable price. I don't use them though (short of experimenting to see what they do and how they do it) as they aren't available for Linux. My purchase was effectively a donation.

Other software I have bought for Linux over the years:

  • Bitwig Studio
  • Renoise
  • Harrison Mixbus
  • u-he ACE
  • u-he Bazille
  • u-he Hive 2
  • Sublime Text
  • Indigo Renderer
  • Substance Designer (I choose to no longer support now that Adobe has purchased despite being very powerful)
  • Substance Painter (I choose to no longer support now that Adobe has purchased despite being very powerful)
  • myBase

All of these programs I bought directly from the vendor's own websites.

Generally I see commercial software for Linux delivered under one of two schemes:

  1. We don't offer support for Linux platforms
  2. We only offer support when used with X distribution

I think most Linux users either stick to the X (which is generally Ubuntu-based, Suse, or Redhat) or assume they are on their own when it comes to dealing with any technical platform issues they may face. Personally I use Arch Linux and not one of the pieces of software I own is officially supported on my distro. That has never bothered me in any way. You simply cannot compare the Linux user-base to the Windows or Mac user-bases. Linux users are generally more tech-savvy or at the very least interested in the technical side of computing and are willing to solve their own problems.

From a development standpoint I suggest that an earlier analogy in this thread that a staff member posited regarding this being like asking Disney to build a Disney World in Germany is quite simply false analogy as the scale of a bricks and mortar project of that size can hardly be compared to software development of any scale. With that out of the way I echo what many others have suggested and that is to use one of the crowd funding systems available to directly answer the "Is there a market?" question. Just make sure that all existing users are aware of it and that the Linux community at large is also aware of it.

If the Affinity Suite was available for Linux natively I would purchase all three again and then dedicate the time to learning them properly not because they are necessarily better than the existing products available for Linux but because I like the tight integration and consistent interface concept between three closely related products.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to move my entire graphic design studio operation to Elementary OS and Affinity studio - plz make this happen, this will be a real game changer & Im sure it makes business sense to earn huge appreciation and love from the design community for this. 

it may cause a lot of professionals to switch to Linux & Affinity as a platform due to the low setup cost without any compromise in productivity.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Cornel Cabral said:

I would like to move my entire graphic design studio operation to Elementary OS and Affinity studio - plz make this happen, this will be a real game changer & Im sure it makes business sense to earn huge appreciation and love from the design community for this. 

it may cause a lot of professionals to switch to Linux & Affinity as a platform due to the low setup cost without any compromise in productivity.  

@Cornel Cabral, I am afraid I have a quote for you:

"We have no plans for a Linux version of the Affinity apps... Sorry"

^ That was posted on the Serif Affinity Twitter feed two years ago and the policy remains exactly the same today because of Linux's small market share that makes it currently unviable to port their softwares over to Linux.

Using native Linux and Windows softwares with Wine, it is now perfectly possible to have a professional grade image processing workflow on any Linux desktop PC or laptop; it's just at the present time it unfortunately cannot yet be done with Serif Affinity products.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

because of Linux's small market share that makes it currently unviable to port their softwares over to Linux.

I'm getting so tired of the low market share argument.  It is such an incomplete analysis of sales potential.

You need to factor in an estimate of penetration rate for each market.  Though the windows market size is greater, I'd bet that the penetration rate for Affinity products within the Windows market would be lower than for the Linux market.  A particular market segment may have fewer customers overall, but still present opportunity for good sales potential due to a higher penetration rate.

Also factor in the growth of the market for Linux on cloud desktops and application virtualization and you've got plenty of potential sales opportunity.  If any software developer was interested in providing a SAAS model for their applications running in the cloud, it would be absolutely absurd for them to not consider getting the application running on Linux.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, justajeffy said:

I'm getting so tired of the low market share argument.  It is such an incomplete analysis of sales potential.

You need to factor in an estimate of penetration rate for each market.  Though the windows market size is greater, I'd bet that the penetration rate for Affinity products within the Windows market would be lower than for the Linux market.  A particular market segment may have fewer customers overall, but still present opportunity for good sales potential due to a higher penetration rate.

Also factor in the growth of the market for Linux on cloud desktops and application virtualization and you've got plenty of potential sales opportunity.  If any software developer was interested in providing a SAAS model for their applications running in the cloud, it would be absolutely absurd for them to not consider getting the application running on Linux.

 

But that is not relevant because the pre-eminent criterion that software companies use to determine whether to release software on a platform is market share. When Linux market share matches that of macOS then changes will start to take place and more commercial software will then become available for the Linux platform.

I am a 100% Linux user these days and I make a point of buying Linux software, e.g. SoftMaker Office, Pixeluvo, etc. as my contribution to making commercial paid-for software viable on the Linux platform. I would buy Affinity Photo the moment it becomes available for Linux (same applies to Skylum software) but I recognise that isn't going to happen until Linux market share significantly increases first.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

But that is not relevant because the pre-eminent criterion that software companies use to determine whether to release software on a platform is market share.

Well, it seems to matter to most of the software developers that service the industry that I work in.  Damn near 100% of them produce Linux versions of their software.  Sure, Linux users in high-end graphics represent a sub-segment of the Linux market, but with an extremely high penetration rate for commercial graphics software and image editing tools.  There's significant sales potential here alone.  Considering we outfit a studio of 50-60 people with Linux versions of expensive software like Autodesk Maya or Foundry Nuke, we wouldn't even blink at the cost of licenses for Affinity Photo for everyone.  Make a proper Linux version, slap a "PRO" moniker at the end of the name, charge 30-40% more, offer volume licensing, then please TAKE MY MONEY.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, justajeffy said:

Well, it seems to matter to most of the software developers that service the industry that I work in.  Damn near 100% of them produce Linux versions of their software.  Sure, Linux users in high-end graphics represent a sub-segment of the Linux market, but with an extremely high penetration rate for commercial graphics software and image editing tools.  There's significant sales potential here alone.  Considering we outfit a studio of 50-60 people with Linux versions of expensive software like Autodesk Maya or Foundry Nuke, we wouldn't even blink at the cost of licenses for Affinity Photo for everyone.  Make a proper Linux version, slap a "PRO" moniker at the end of the name, charge 30-40% more, offer volume licensing, then please TAKE MY MONEY.

Yes, there are indeed some specialist areas where Linux has a much greater use and higher market share but those are not the markets that Serif, Corel, Skylum, etc. are going after. They are going instead for the standard and much larger amateur, semi-pro, pro market with relatively low cost products and so they are just not listening to their potential Linux customers.

I don't think that there's anything much that we can do about that except perhaps to encourage more people to adopt Linux as their main operating system. I do think there is some potential Linux market share gain to be had from Apple adopting Arm processors with more highly professional software becoming only available for Windows and Linux so boosting Linux uptake that way.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Snapseed said:

Yes, there are indeed some specialist areas where Linux has a much greater use and higher market share but those are not the markets that Serif, Corel, Skylum, etc. are going after. They are going instead for the standard and much larger amateur, semi-pro, pro market with relatively low cost products and so they are just not listening to their potential Linux customers.

I don't think that there's anything much that we can do about that except perhaps to encourage more people to adopt Linux as their main operating system. I do think there is some potential Linux market share gain to be had from Apple adopting Arm processors with more highly professional software becoming only available for Windows and Linux so boosting Linux uptake that way.

 

Why do you think software developers will not develop for ARM on Mac? If they have a client base already it is in their interest to continue to develop and update their systems to utilize Apples own CPU. I do not think you will see an exodus of pro apps from Apple especially when Adobe is already developing and testing on these new CPU's from Apple. They are a BIG industry standard and if they are still there creatives are going to generally stay with the Mac. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Who says Apple chips will be inferior to the Intel lineup ?

Intel is currently only good in converting power input into a lot of heat and little computing output. i9 CPUs in MacBook Pros are nearly useless, because they run that fast into thermal throttling that they indeed are outperformed by the i7-MBPs.

Apple would not move away from Intel if there would not be a clear perspective to serve the professional community that is the core of Mac business. I can not see any market share gain for Linux based machines from Apple moving to their own CPUs and GPUs. For software developers it makes things easier, because a Mac app can easily be adapted to iPad use, and vice versa. Serif showed how it works, when declaring the Affinity suite to be adapted within a few days from Apples WWDC 2020.

IMHO no gain here for the idea of a Linux version of the A-suite.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Blende21 said:

Apple would not move away from Intel if there would not be a clear perspective to serve the professional community that is the core of Mac business.

I observed the whole opposite within the last years. Apple is moving more and more into mass market making professional users more and more unhappy. Especially in software development, where had been a great increase in software developers the years before.

Only the graphic and design area seems still to get seriously respected by apple.

 

For software developers who did not fell in love with apple and just want a good choice to work, apple became more and more a unserious lifestyle product.

The same happens with Microsoft Windows 10, so more and more software developers move to linux.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, Blende21 said:

Who says Apple chips will be inferior to the Intel lineup ?

Intel is currently only good in converting power input into a lot of heat and little computing output. i9 CPUs in MacBook Pros are nearly useless, because they run that fast into thermal throttling that they indeed are outperformed by the i7-MBPs.

Apple would not move away from Intel if there would not be a clear perspective to serve the professional community that is the core of Mac business. I can not see any market share gain for Linux based machines from Apple moving to their own CPUs and GPUs. For software developers it makes things easier, because a Mac app can easily be adapted to iPad use, and vice versa. Serif showed how it works, when declaring the Affinity suite to be adapted within a few days from Apples WWDC 2020.

IMHO no gain here for the idea of a Linux version of the A-suite.

@Blende21, that's nothing. I have three rows of somewhat older AMD chips arranged in parallel and they serve as the space heater in my living room. They truly belt out heat and Intel's got nothing on them.

(Hint: that was an ungood not-joke)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Requester said:

I observed the whole opposite within the last years. Apple is moving more and more into mass market making professional users more and more unhappy. Especially in software development, where had been a great increase in software developers the years before.

Only the graphic and design area seems still to get seriously respected by apple.

 

For software developers who did not fell in love with apple and just want a good choice to work, apple became more and more a unserious lifestyle product.

The same happens with Microsoft Windows 10, so more and more software developers move to linux.

You're definitely seeing the pattern there.

There will still be plenty of choice of image editors, digital audio workstations, desktop publishers, etc, for Arm Macs so most people won't notice the difference but some areas will definitely suffer not least because of Apple's deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL open standards.

It is likely that there will be fewer AAA games ported over to Arm Macs although Arm Mac users will now have full access to Apple Arcade games.  Similarly, the move to Arm chips is highly likely to limit the availability of 3D compositing software, 3D modelling software,  special effects software and other scientific and technical software that is currently available on the macOS platform.

It also won't be possible to use Boot Camp any more to get access to professional Windows software that way either for obvious reasons. Autodesk have already stopped producing their Alias and VRED software for Macs and that is just the start of things to come. I don't doubt that Tim Cook and others have already done their analyses about the pros and cons of this move and they've obviously decided to go ahead even though there will be significant drawbacks for a minority of customers.

That leaves the Windows and Linux operating systems as the only home for high end professional and technical software and that's where there's some opportunity for Linux market share growth to take place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.